Re: "Racial" medicine

On Sat, 6 May 2006 19:21:04 +0000 (UTC),
dmcanzi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (David Canzi -- non-mailable) wrote:

In article <ngco52pp6gd719vo5n0m3svfqmt2f1d2vl@xxxxxxx>,
Matt Silberstein <RemoveThisPrefixmatts2nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 6 May 2006 03:24:05 +0000 (UTC), in talk.origins ,
dmcanzi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (David Canzi -- non-mailable) in
<e3h4sl$je7$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If a black couple had a white child, you would be surprised and
so, probably, would the husband. Similarly if a white couple had
a black child. So the difference in appearance between people
originating from different regions of the world is a biological
phenomenon. What makes it "invalid"? ...

If you wish to sort on one characteristic, the amount of melanin in
the skin, you can do so easily. It is when you try to associate other
characteristics with that one characteristic that you get serious
problems. Do you think that "race" just means skin color or do you
have something else in mind?

John Wilkins said this: "Race is not geographical variation
of human subpopulations. It is a social construct based on a
social context."

But what he says race isn't -- geographical variation of human
subpopulations -- is exactly what I have long understood the word
"race" to mean, and it would not have occurred to me that most
people who use that word mean something else by it.

So what do most average ordinary people mean when they use the
word "race"? What is the nature of this social construct John
Wilkins speaks of?

I think you are missing the entire point of this thread.

What you mean by "race" is exactly what most average ordinary people
mean by "race" and what almost everybody in the universe means by
"race" (at least in the last century or so) and is what I mean, also,
when talking about humans. That is to say: white/black/yellow =
European/African/Asian; skin color is a marker of geographic origin is
a marker of subpopulation. The point is that such a subdivision is
completely illegitimate. The biological definition of race does not
apply to those groups. In other words, human races do not exist in
the biological sense.

So where does that leave us with the words everybody has been using
for so long? The concept is a social, not a biological, construct,
and is based on social context, not biological genetic markers nor
even geographical origin. "Whites" historically have too often
regarded anybody with dark skin as "black" no matter what their
geographical origin. In fact, "whites" historically have too often
regarded anybody with even darkish skin as "other"; hence the
designation "people of color" instead of "non-white". Furthermore, the
concept is a very flawed social construct since it applies only to
"obvious" cases and fails miserably when applied more broadly across
the whole spectrum of humanity.



.

Relevant Pages

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